Re: Bushmaster
Yes, I meant the receiver extension. You got me and my proof reading and multitasking sucks, along with me researching upper receiver parts for my next build so I was stuck on stupid too. That's what I get for typing and having a conversation at the same time, but you knew what I meant. Other than two that I could see obvious signs or admission of user tampering, none have come loose. These are rifles carried all day, every day.
Gas keys. Four failures out of about 1200 rifles over my four years with this batch. Yes, that is a hard failure, but I used to see an equal number of Colt failures on M16A2s while working the ranges at Parris Island and those rifles see far fewer rounds downrange per year than ours do. I was told by our armorer that Bushmaster had a bad batch and these likely were due to that, but I can't qualify that information as to how credible it is. You can see where the staking hit the screw head but didn't compress far enough into it.
Any weapon that gets used takes normal wear and tear, and you're always going to have failures once the years start stacking up. In my experience with a large group of rifles in use, I would not say that Bushmaster is inferior to Colt with similar service usage when reliability is concerned. Actually, I got fed up with worn out FCG on the Colts constantly causing double fires, but have yet to see one on our Bushmasters.
I know it isn't the cool thing to defend Bushmaster, but I'm here to tell you they work. Again, I just wish they had better barrels but they still hit minute of man just fine.
Do I own one, yes. Will I buy another one, no and that is because I can afford more now than I could when I bought that second hand Bushmaster a decade ago. It hasn't failed either and it's my milsurp spitting hammer pair beater while I'm home. One beater is enough for me and I save the good stuff for my MK12.
As for the ACR, yeah, I'm in the group of sorely disappointed on that whole story. At least they can build an AR.
